Sources: Google In Talks To Acquire Twitter (Updated)

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by Michael Arrington on April 2, 2009

Here’s a heck of a rumor that we’ve sourced from two separate people close to the negotiations: Google is in late stage negotiations to acquire Twitter. We don’t know the price but can assume its well, well north of the $250 million valuation that they saw in their recent funding.

Twitter turned down an offer to be bought by Facebook just a few months ago for half a billion dollars, although that was based partially on overvalued Facebook stock. Google would be paying in cash and/or publicly valued stock, which is equivalent to cash. So whatever the final acquisition value might be, it can’t be compared apples-to-apples with the Facebook deal.

Why would Google want Twitter? We’ve been arguing for some time that Twitter’s real value is in search. It holds the keys to the best real time database and search engine on the Internet, and Google doesn’t even have a horse in the game.

Sources: Google In Talks To Acquire Twitter (Updated)

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Joseph Stiglitz: "It's going to be bad, very bad" | Salon News

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Many people are comparing the financial crisis to the Great Depression. Will it really be that bad?

It's going to be bad, very bad. We're experiencing the worst downturn since the Great Depression, and we haven't reached the bottom yet. I'm very pessimistic. Governments are indeed reacting better today than during the global economic crisis. They're lowering interest rates and boosting the economy with economic stimulus plans. This is the right direction, but it's not enough.

The American government has committed over a trillion dollars to save the banks and $789 billion to boost the economy. Do you think this is too little?

I do. More than $700 billion sounds like a lot, but it's not. On the one hand, a large part of the money will first be given out next year, which is too late. On the other, a third of it is drained away by tax cuts. They don't really stimulate consumption, because people will save the majority of that money. I fear that the effect of the American economic stimulus plan won't be even half as big as expected.

At least governments worldwide are bracing themselves against the recession, as opposed to the global economic crisis where they accelerated the recession through their savings policy.

That's right. That's why I'm confident we'll get off lighter than during the Great Depression. On the other hand, there's a series of developments that make me very anxious. The state of our financial system, for example, is worse than it was 80 years ago.

Hundreds of banks collapsed in the U.S. at that time. Today most of them are being saved by the government. What's so bad about that?

The banks that survived 80 years ago continued to lend money. Today many banks aren't lending money anymore, above all the large investment banks. This will deepen the crisis.

Joseph Stiglitz: "It's going to be bad, very bad" | Salon News

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Tutu worried about Zuma presidency

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Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu is not looking forward to a Jacob Zuma presidency, he said in Durban yesterday.

While the African National Congress leader was a warm and friendly man, Tutu said he was not the ideal president, The Witness newspaper and SABC radio news quoted him as saying.

"In the year of [Barack] Obama, can you imagine what it is like when you are walking in New York and they ask you who will be the next president...

"At the present time, I can’t pretend to be looking forward to having him as my president," said Tutu who was speaking at a book launch at the Durban city hall.

He said he hoped the National Prosecuting Authority would decide to continue with Zuma’s fraud and corruption prosecution.

"For his own sake, I hope they are not going to have a political solution. If he is innocent as he has claimed to be, for goodness sake, let it be a court of law that says so," said Tutu.

The Times - Tutu worried about Zuma presidency

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G20 summit: European demands threaten to wreck deal - Times Online

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France and Germany delivered a late threat to derail Gordon Brown’s efforts to secure a global recovery deal last night by demanding new concessions from the United States on financial regulation.

In a classic show of eve-of-summit brinkmanship, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy joined forces to give warning that they would refuse to sign any agreement that did not meet their “red lines” on tax havens, hedge fund regulation, tracing “securitised” assets sold around the world and capping bankers’ remuneration. They also wanted the “naming and shaming” of tax havens that refused to go along with tougher regulatory rules, which is being opposed by the United States.

In a reminder of former confrontations between America and the countries of Old Europe, Mr Sarkozy suggested that Europe would not take economic direction from the US. He appeared to suggest that America would have to compromise, adding pointedly: “The crisis didn’t spontaneously erupt in Europe, did it?”

G20 summit: European demands threaten to wreck deal - Times Online

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Ban Ki-moon: I fear global collapse | The Guardian

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• Ban Ki-moon
• The Guardian, Thursday 2 April 2009

Today's G20 meeting can make the difference between human hope and despair, between economic recovery and a plunge into deepening recession. We have seen the frightening velocity of change. What began as a financial crisis has become a global economic crisis. I fear worse to come: a full-blown political crisis defined by growing social unrest, weakened governments and angry publics who have lost all faith in their leaders and their own future.

We must stop the slide. The recession hurts everyone, but those hurt worst are the poor - people with no homes or savings to lose, who in some countries spend as much as 80% of their income on food, and often lack the basics of healthcare, water and sanitation. They are the majority of the world's people - and they have no safety net.

In good times, economic and social development comes slowly. In bad times, things fall apart alarmingly fast. It is a short step from hunger to starvation, from disease to death, from peace and stability to conflict and wars that spill across borders and affect us all, near and far. Unless we can build a worldwide recovery we face a looming catastrophe in human development.

This is what I will tell world leaders at the G20 summit in London. That is why I will press for urgent collective action to bolster global development and allow people to keep faith in their future.

Ban Ki-moon: I fear global collapse | Comment is free | The Guardian

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Threats and killings: Just another SA election - Mail & Guardian Online

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Threats, disrupted meetings and killings have tarnished campaigning for South Africa's elections, as the country struggles to fully overcome the legacy of violence in politics.

An election monitoring group recently listed 40 incidents linked to the campaign for April 22 elections, mostly "at the level of intimidation or clashes", coordinator Derrick Marco said.

However five politicians have been killed since January, four in KwaZulu-Natal, which was a hotbed of political clashes between the African National Congress and the Inkatha Freedom Party from 1980 to 1995.

The political climate has improved enormously since the first all-race elections in 1994, said Mary de Haas, an independent researcher into violence in the province.

But she added: "Threats, intimidation and deaths still occur around election time."

This year the concerns are different due to the creation of an ANC splinter group, the Congress of the People (Cope), which has led to new complaints about blocked campaign rallies and shredded election posters, with reports of scuffles emerging every week.

Threats and killings: Just another SA election - Mail & Guardian Online: The smart news source

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Africa: G20 Should Use Crisis As Opportunity to Fix Inequity

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The daunting task of making Africa the centre of attention awaits Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi when the Group of 20 (G20) rich and emerging economies meet in London tomorrow.

Invited by the host country, Zenawi, who chairs the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), is the only African leader apart from South Africa's President Kgalema Motlanthe to attend the G20 summit.

Zenawi was in London two weeks ago to hold pre-summit consultations with senior African officials and organisers of the summit, including UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown. His message to Brown was clear: that the richest countries cannot afford to ignore Africa in the wake of the global economic meltdown.

His is a belief shared by African trade ministers who met in Addis Ababa on Mar 19 at the headquarters of the African Union.

"As a result of the global economic crisis, more than at any other time, there is a need to place African economic development at the centre of international efforts to build strategies towards the recovery of the global economy," reads a communiqué the ministers issued at the conclusion of their two-day meeting.

allAfrica.com: Africa: 'G20 Should Use Crisis As Opportunity to Fix Inequity' (Page 1 of 1)

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Obama’s Ersatz Capitalism

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By JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ

Published: March 31, 2009

THE Obama administration’s $500 billion or more proposal to deal with America’s ailing banks has been described by some in the financial markets as a win-win-win proposal. Actually, it is a win-win-lose proposal: the banks win, investors win — and taxpayers lose.

Treasury hopes to get us out of the mess by replicating the flawed system that the private sector used to bring the world crashing down, with a proposal marked by overleveraging in the public sector, excessive complexity, poor incentives and a lack of transparency.

Let’s take a moment to remember what caused this mess in the first place. Banks got themselves, and our economy, into trouble by overleveraging — that is, using relatively little capital of their own, they borrowed heavily to buy extremely risky real estate assets. In the process, they used overly complex instruments like collateralized debt obligations.

The prospect of high compensation gave managers incentives to be shortsighted and undertake excessive risk, rather than lend money prudently. Banks made all these mistakes without anyone knowing, partly because so much of what they were doing was “off balance sheet” financing.

Read the full article here .....

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G20 protesters break into RBS building | Metro.co.uk

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Furious protesters have attacked a Royal Bank of Scotland's branch in the City of London, smashing its windows and breaking into the building.

The branch, which appeared to be empty, was hit by a hail of missiles including plastic bottles and toilet rolls.

Scotland Yard said around 4,000 people had gathered outside the Bank and cordons had been put up in response to "increasing levels of violence".

Environmentalists, anarchists, anti-war protesters and workers hit by the financial crisis are demanding action from world leaders.

G20 protesters break into RBS building | Metro.co.uk

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Tweak in 'Conficker' worm sparks fears -- newsday.com

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Even if it's not an April Fools' joke, the latest moves by the dreaded Conficker worm are by no means an Internet Armageddon, either.

The worm's alarming outbreak entered a new phase Wednesday as clocks around the world ticked into the first day of April, the day it was scheduled to change programming.

But security experts appeared correct in their predictions that the day was likely to come and go without any major disruptions, even though the worm has infected anywhere from 3 million to 12 million PCs running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system.

Computer infections now are all about making money by stealing people's personal information. And Conficker's authors stand to make more money from renting out parts of their huge "botnet" to spammers or identity thieves than by destroying parts of the Internet. 

"These guys have been pretty smart until now -- the worm is unfortunately very well done," said Patrik Runald, chief security advisor for F-Secure Corp. "So far they haven't been stupid. So why should they start on April 1?

Tweak in 'Conficker' worm sparks fears -- newsday.com

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